A massive turnout to the protest this Monday, September 26th, at the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting is of great importance to our struggle. The voice of CUNY contingents — adjuncts, grad student employees, HEOs, CLIP and Continuing Ed workers and many others — must be heard, together with full-time faculty and staff, and large numbers of students, in the fight for our basic right to healthcare.

The demonstration has been called by the PSC with the demand to save healthcare for the 1,700+ adjuncts who currently get it from the Welfare Fund. The union is calling for these adjuncts to be put on the city health plan.

Participating in and mobilizing for this fight, the CCU demands healthcare for ALL of CUNY’s contingent employees. The one-year waiting period should be eliminated; there should be full CUNY funding for coverage on the city health plan; and none of our colleagues and coworkers should be without healthcare — as summed up in our contract demand #3: “Comprehensive employer-paid health insurance on par with municipal workers for all contingent employees.”

Together with our other three contract demands, this is key to opposing CUNY’s divide-and-conquer tactics and waging a real fight against increasingly unequal and destructive two-tier labor system. For its part, the Adjunct Project is raising the slogan “All CUNY contingents on city health plan” in its flier for Monday’s protest. At Monday’s demonstration, the idea is for members of the CCU, Adjunct Project, First Friday committee and others to group together in a united-front “contingents’ contingent,” each raising its own banners, signs, slogans and views in pursuit of the common goal of defending and winning full healthcare for us all.

Your participation is of great importance. If you can involve colleagues, friends and students in sign-making parties, leafleting and other work to build for this — and above all come down with them to the protest on the 26th, this will be key to making our voices heard.